“May I have it?” It was the sprig of lavender. But the painter looked at, and squeezed, the hand.
“If you promise to make a big score on Thursday!”
Susanna, it must be admitted, was learning coquetry.
“Done! Come into the beech avenue,” the painter pleaded, “just for a few moments, before that little beast follows us. You know he will!”
“He can’t!” Susanna’s golden eyelashes drooped upon crimson cheeks. “He can’t get down! I—I took away the ladder before I came away!” she owned. Both hands were imprisoned, her blue eyes lifted, lost themselves in the brown ones that looked down at her.
“Was that because you wanted—to be alone with me? Was it?” demanded Wopse.
“I’ll let you go when you have owned up, not before,” Wopse said sternly.
Susanna’s reply came in a whisper: “You—know—it—was!”
The whisper was so faint that Wopse had to bend quite low to catch it. Of course he need not have kissed Susanna. But he did, as Alaric Osmond-Orme and Lord Beaumaris appeared, walking confidentially together arm-in-arm.
“I think my little stratagem succeeds!” Lord Beaumaris had just said, in reference to the preference exhibited by his daughter for the society of the pretended painter. And Alaric had responded:
“Yes, as you say, my plan has proved quite a brilliant success!” when Lord Beaumaris clutched his cousin’s arm.
“Merciful powers! Susanna and that—that young impostor!”
Alaric’s eyeglass fell with a click, and the diabolical left eye twirled and twisted fiendishly in its socket as its retina embraced the picture indicated.
“Feign not to have observed.... Well, Susanna! How are you, Halcyon. We are strolling towards the ballroom for a glimpse of Wopse’s work.”
“We are stro——” Lord Beaumaris choked and purpled. Alaric dragged him on.
“Do you think?...” Susanna’s cheeks were white roses now. “Do you think—they——”
“Oh!” Susanna confronted him with blazing eyes. “You!—you did it on _purpose_! It was a plot——”
She clenched her strong young hands, battling with the desire to buffet the handsome bronzed face before her. “I’ll never—never speak to you again!” she cried.
“You will not be allowed to,” groaned the poor painter. “Our walks and rides and all the rest are over.... Yes, there has been a plot, but not of the kind you suspect. I am a traitor—but not the kind of traitor you think me. Lady Lymston, I am not the Duke of Halcyon. I am a poor devil—I beg your pardon!—I am a painter; my name is Wopse, and I have disgraced my profession by the part I have played!” He sat down miserably on a rustic bench.